Childbirth Traditions

Outcaste women, cast-out birth knowledge This paper examines the women who traditionally handled childbirth in the Indian subcontinent—their body knowledge, hand-on skills, rituals and the epistemological framework that informs their lives and work. Needless to say this episteme differs radically from that of the dominant biomedical, public health and English-educated civil society establishments. We at the JEEVA project have turned to dais or, in public health parlance TBAs (Traditional Birth Attendants), themselves in an attempt to hear their voices and comprehend their meanings within their own contexts, communities and homes…. and epistemes. JEEVA research methodologies have inverted various hierarchies by listening carefully to dais themselves and foregrounding their midwifery skills, worldviews, body knowledge and cosmology. JEEVA is a collective of concerned health professionals who came together motivated by a concern to document the best of the dai tradition. We conducted a rapid intensive qualitative study with in-depth interviews of 10 to 12 experienced dais in an area where the traditional practices of dais are still the norm. The research team's attitudes of friendliness, respect and genuine interest in the topic were essential for creating an environment conducive to dais sharing information with us. Our methodology of open-ended questions allowed dais to determine the direction of their responses. We had the additional advantage of being helped and housed by a local NGO, Jan Chetna Manch. The primary data on

When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. But how do these beliefs affect the ways the Beng raise their children?
In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how Beng religious ideology affects every aspect of their childrearing practices, from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk. She shows too how widespread poverty among the Beng sets practical limits on these practices. A mother of two, Gottlieb includes moving discussions of how her experiences among the Beng changed the way she saw her own parenting. Throughout the book she also draws telling comparisons between Beng and Euro-American parenting, bringing home just how deeply culture matters to the ways we all raise our children.
Anyone interested in the culture of infancy, and vice versa, will enjoy The Afterlife Is Where We Come From.

Bodies that Birth puts birthing bodies at the center of questions about contemporary birth politics, power and agency. Arguing that the fleshy and embodied aspects of birth have been largely silenced in social science scholarship, Rachelle Chadwick uses an array of birth stories, from diverse race-class demographics, to explore the narrative entanglements between flesh, power and sociomateriality in relation to birth.

Introduction: Stem cells are a primitive cell type found in all animals and are capable of both self-renewal and differentiation. It is this capacity for self-renewal and for differentiation into repair cells that offers great potential for regenerative medicine. Purpose of the study was to assess the effectiveness of Self Instructional Module (SIM) on knowledge regarding cord blood banking & stem cell therapy among antenatal women in selected health care institutions of Pune city Material and method: A Quasi-experimental Pre test – post test control group design with Non probability Purposive Sampling method. The tool consisted of section I (demographic data), and section II (structured knowledge questionnaire) to assess the knowledge on cord blood banking & stem cell therapy. Result: Majority 44% of the control group and 62% of the experimental group participants are in the age group of 21 to 25 years. 32% of participants of control group are educated up to primary level. While in the experimental group most of the participants i.e. 38% have secondary level of education. Most of the participants are housewives / homemakers i.e. 80% participants from control group and 88% participants from experimental group. 44% of the participants from both the groups had no children.58% participants from control group and 68% from experimental group are Hindus. The mean score of experimental group is less i.e. 1.20 in pretest which has increased to 2.54; this increase is found significant which has determined the effectiveness of Self Instructional Module (SIM). Pre-interventional finding are only associated with the level of education of the participants. Conclusion: The analysis reveals that Self Instructional Module was helpful to improve the knowledge regarding cord blood banking & stem cell therapy among antenatal women.

Essay
Rituals of Eastern countries’ Indigenous religions are united by common features. Nations have lived close for centuries, and therefore influenced each other traditions. These effects and changes can best be seen in life-cycle ceremonies as marriage or death. The birth of a child, as one of the examples of life-cycle rituals, has distinctive features in Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism religions.

The demon best known in Turkey under the names of alkarısı and albastı has long been considered a personification of puerperal fever and is generally associated with childbirth and its dangers. It is said to attack pregnant women, women in labour and newborn babies, but also has a reputation of occasionally harassing other humans, especially men, by sitting at night on their chests and inducing them asphyxia, nightmares and a large variety of disorders; in this last form it is equally believed to attack young girls. Some other legends pretend that the demon amuses itself by riding the horses of the locals in the hours of darkness and plaiting their manes and tails. When attacking women in labour or women after childbirth, it steals their liver and takes it across a running water (stream, river), sometimes a lake, or soaks it in it; if it succeeds in its actions, the woman dies, her rescue becoming impossible. Although the majority of Turkish scholars consider that this evil spirit, which is also known in Armenia and other Caucasian countries, in Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, is of Turkish origin, we maintain and try to demonstrate that it is nothing but a late version of an ancient Mesopotamian demon (or family of demons), which survived by virtue of the Jewish successive reinterpretations of Babylonian demonology. In other words, the Turkish alkarısı is a local adaptation of the primeval Lilith, which became notorious especially in the Middle Ages.

Aula Orientalis 33/2 (2015) 271-286. Final Proof.
This article presents the editio princeps of a Mandaic lamella from the Martin Schøyen collection. In the accompanying commentary, several Mandaic lexemes are discussed: abulia ‘fissures’, audana ‘desolated place’ and ʿbdunia ‘Abaddons’, gusparta ‘rooster’s comb’, d-p-n ‘to strike’, huṣa ‘palm frond’ (for later Manaic hukṣa), ṭasa ‘lamella, metal strip’, y-ṭ-b ‘burnish’, mitnia ‘loins’, m-r-s ‘to crush’, n-p-a ‘to shatter’ (< Aramaic n-p-ʕ), ʿumta ‘oath’, qmaha ‘amulet’, ragama ‘smiting’, šdqa ‘paralysis’, šuliata (pl. form) ‘afterbirths’ and šlutina ‘bat’. It also discusses the shift of *ʿu > i before a and orthographic interchanges of z and d.

This paper explores indigenous Indian concepts of power, satta and Shakti, working with data, specifically dai interviews, generated by the Jeeva Research Project. From the dais' own words it attempts to discern and present the differences between satta and Shakti in order to nuance out the very different qualities and manifestations of power and capacity that are being enacted in the handling of childbirth in poor and rural areas of India.

El miedo, según el diccionario de la RAE, es una angustia por un riesgo o daño real o imaginario, o la aprensión a que suceda algo contrario a lo que se desea. Y el riesgo, según ese mismo diccionario, es la contingencia o proximidad de un daño. El embarazo, el parto y el puerperio son procesos por el que pasan la mayoría de las mujeres y la muerte o los daños irreparables que pueden resultar de estos procesos se dan solamente en casos excepcionales.

Childbirth at the early modern court was inherently political. It promised dynastic continuity and political stability as well as diplomatic opportunity through the marital alliances of the children. If childbirth was highly politicised, it was also highly ritualised and provided a stage for material magnificence. Preparations, rituals, furnishings and decorations for royal births and lying-in were carefully calculated to promote the magnificence of the monarch and dynasty and to conform to contemporary medical opinion. This chapter illuminates the main stages of royal childbirth in early modern Europe, beginning with claims to fertility, proceeding to pregnancy, practical preparations for the birth in furnishing rooms, supplying linens and securing suitable staff, to the birth itself and the lying-in period. The focus is on early modern England and France, especially royal births at the Stuart and Bourbon courts, but comparative examples are also drawn from the Spanish Habsburgs, the Gonzagas in Mantua and the German electoral principalities.

Are babies divine, or do they have the devil in them? Should parents talk to their infants, or is it a waste of time? This book provides answers to these and many other questions about the nature and nurturing of infants. In fact, it provides several distinct answers to each one.

These answers appear as advice to parents in seven societies around the world. The authors of this book have imagined what a foreign-born Dr. Spock might have written if he (or she) were a healer from Bali . . . or an Aboriginal grandmother from the Australian desert . . . or a diviner from a rural village in West Africa. As the seven “manuals” that make up this book reveal, experts from elsewhere offer intriguingly different advice to new parents.

The creative format of this book brings alive a rich fund of ethnographic knowledge about seven societies, vividly illustrating a simple but powerful truth: there are many models of babyhood, each shaped by deeply held values and widely varying cultural contexts.

After reading this book, child-rearing may never again seem a matter of “common sense.”

In preparing for the course, “Wisdom and the NEW Civilization,” I read several assigned books and listened to online sources that talked of developing a new consciousness to wrestle with the challenges of our age and create a viable future for humanity. The words used to frame this idea often spoke of " birthing a new consciousness " or " the birth of a new civilization. " This image of birth began to live in me as the day of departure for the course approached. Simultaneous to my preparation was the pending birth of a new granddaughter, whose parents were planning to deliver at my house where I would act as doula for this beautiful event. When my daughter-in-law announced that she was in labor, I noted the synchronicity of this new arrival and the birth language I was seeing in my study as I went about the frenzied preparations for the birth. Throughout the course of labor, delivery, and care for the newborn, I contemplated this natural process as a metaphor for the theme of the course in the context of this larger trope of birth as it relates to our present challenges and crisis as a species. " " In my study for the course I identified three areas of focus: (1) The lack of primal wisdom due to the demise of ancient and modern nature-based cultures that had a lunar, feminine essence, and the critical role nature immersion can play in the awakening necessary to address the problems we face; (2) the beginnings and benefits of the solar, masculine, rational, and scientifically-oriented culture that informs our modern society, the genesis of which can be traced, in part, to Greek wisdom and thought; and (3) a hope for a future wisdom generated from a synthesis of the primal, feminine wisdom, and the discriminating and analytical masculine influence. Quite unexpectedly, I saw these three themes emerge in the intense process of childbirth I was witnessing firsthand. I saw in the events of the birth of my granddaughter a possibility to synthesize the two historical wisdom streams into a future wisdom, and I will use primitive and modern birth practices as a framework to define the problem and as a compass for envisioning a new way. But first I will discuss the context, the " big picture narrative " (Herman, 2013), because " where you are and when you are determine who you are " (Garrison, 2015)."

Over the last century, fear of birth has become a standardized social fear for men and women, regardless of whether or not they are mothers. This fear of the childbirth process arrives to the population via medical discourses that are transmitted with authority through regular contact between health workers and patients (Sanchez, 2008, 72). It is also transmitted via literary texts and audio-visual media and, in the last decade, through social networks that spread information and opinions. This article seeks to reveal the specific weight of the narratives personally transmitted between female relatives and friends throughout the lives of women. The text is based on qualitative research conducted through interviews with women between the ages of 20 and 90 in the province of Barcelona.

In this article, I examine the way Swedish-speaking first-time mothers living in Finland narrate their experience of giving birth between 1993 and 1997. The object is narrating about the moment of birth and experiential dimension of giving birth. This includes an analysis of stylistic means used in narration, and the points of narration. The material consists of childbirth stories told by 14 Swedish-speaking first-time mothers in interviews during the 1990s. I define the story as a personal experience narrative. The stories show that the women's experience is embodied. The birth-givers are more focused on giving birth than giving birth to a child and they relate to ambient norms and values in their narration.

The humanities study the human condition, something that begins at birth and ends in death. But if the scholarly production on these two topics is any indicator, then academics are more fascinated with death than they are with birth. The top listing that popped up when I searched under “childbirth” in Oxford University Press, for example, was “Death in Childbirth,” and searching under “birth” in the same publication brought to the top a book called “Death before Birth.” Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. Why we choose death over birth goes much deeper than simple intrigue, however. Some investigation reveals that intellectual approaches to birth are suppressed in both active and passive ways. While one could argue that the historical domination of white men in the academy is part of the problem, the lopsided coverage of these two monumental endpoints of life is quite complex and cannot be reduced to it. Understanding the reasons behind this suppression requires a rethinking of how we address major life transitions.